"Sir—I mean, Your Majesty—there is a party below who—"
"I know, I'll be there directly," Tremane interrupted. "You know the drill by now; go see to the arrangements, and as soon as I look appropriate I'll be down. Blasted crown," he muttered, as the aide saluted, recollected again that Tremane was a King now and not a military commander, and bowed himself out. "Where did I put it this time?"
"Where you always put it, Tremane," Elspeth laughed. "Locked up in the chest."
"Right, with the robes that are too damned heavy to wear and not warm enough to make any difference in the Great Hall." Tremane swore with annoyance under his breath, and Darkwind wondered how he would ever have survived being made Emperor if he disliked the panoply of rank so much. "I won't miss winter one tiny bit. Thank you; I'll see you in the Hall and we can get this nonsense over with. Again."
"Oh, this time it looks as if it will be more than worth the effort," Elspeth assured him, as she preceded Darkwind into the hallway.
"Will it?" he asked her, as they descended the staircase to their own quarters.
"I think he'll be pleasantly surprised," she said. "I don't know much about Hardorn heraldry, but I think this new fellow may be the highest-ranking native to survive Ancar, and that means he'll be bringing a fair piece of the country with him. Not to mention his escort, and they looked as if they probably represent some major armed forces."
"So how old is this baron?" Darkwind asked. He had a good reason for asking; the surviving nobles of Hardorn tended to be mostly very old, or very young. The former had survived by being no threat to Ancar, and the latter by being hidden by their relatives, usually with reliable farmers or other family retainers.
"I'd say early teens; fourteen, fifteen at the most," Elspeth replied.
"Hence the reason he'll be more impressed by a Hawkbrother than a Herald. He may not even know what a Herald is, until someone tells him." Darkwind shook a finger at her. "You're stealing Tremane's silver, you little cheat."
"Then he shouldn't bet with me. He ought to know by now that I never propose a bet unless I'm certain of the outcome." She nodded at the guards on either side of their door and opened it herself. Their own guards from Valdemar stationed inside the door brought their weapons up until they saw who was entering; then they grinned sheepishly and returned to a deceptively relaxed posture.
"Is that any way to treat a monarch?" Darkwind asked her, and sighed as he began climbing the stair to their private quarters. "Never mind; forget I asked. I suppose it won't hurt him."
"I never treat Tremane casually in front of anyone else," Elspeth reminded him, taking the narrow staircase a little behind him. "This is calculated behavior; it shows him that I consider him my equal and will treat him as such. And as Mother often reminds me, the fact that I abdicated in favor of the twins does not make me any less a princess. It's not a bad thing in this case to have one of the Blood Royal acting as ambassador."
"True, all of it." The next floor was the purview of their guards and staff, who were currently lounging about, engaged in various off-duty occupations in the main room of their circular suite. Elspeth and Darkwind both waved at the rest of their entourage as they passed through, but did not stop on that floor. He continued the conversation. "Well, I take it you think this latest delegation is worth bringing out the full formal gear."
"Every feather, bead, bell and bauble," Elspeth said firmly. "Full Whites for me, and the circlet, with badges and medals. And don't pretend you don't like to dress up, my love."
"I wouldn't dream of it." The scent of the balsam incense he used both to perfume the air of their private quarters and to discourage pests met them as they reached their own floor. "Unlike you so-called 'civilized' peoples, we Tayledras know how to create clothing that is impressive, functional, and comfortable."
"Don't put me in that 'civilized' category!" she protested. "We Valdemarans feel precisely the same way! Well, we Heralds do, anyway, and that category includes the ruling family."
"Impressive?" He raised an eyebrow even as he went to the chest containing his clothing and raised the lid. "I'll grant you the functional and comfortable, but you Valdemarans have no sense of style, or at least, you Heralds don't. You horrified my poor hertasi with your uniform, you know. They thought you were wearing the sacks your clothes were supposed to be carried in."
They "argued" about clothing, style, and decoration happily all the time they were changing into their formal clothing, she into the Whites that he had redesigned, with the additions of rank, and he into the most elaborate outfit he owned, although by the standards set by Firesong, he was rather drab. His draped clothing of scarlet, gold, and warm brown was augmented by a sculpted leather tunic with a padded shoulder, and when he was dressed, Vree left his perch by the window and lofted straight to him, to land on the shoulder with a fraction of the impact he would have used in making a landing on a perch. Having Vree on his shoulder instead of his wrist served a double function. First, no falconer would ever have let one of his birds sit on his shoulder; that was a tacit invitation to facial scarring or losing an eye if something startled the bird or if it suddenly decided that this was a good time to strike out for freedom. This marked him to the knowledgeable as a Hawkbrother with no doubt. Only a bondbird could be trusted to sit this way, with no jesses, no hood, and no means of "control" over him. And second, if the exotic clothing would not set him apart from the rest, then Vree, who was much larger than any forestgyre or other gyrfalcon these people had ever seen, certainly would.
Elspeth, who had a lifetime of rapid changes-of-outfit to fall back on, waited with an exaggerated expression of boredom for him to finish his belt adjustments. "Bring your head over here," Elspeth commanded, the feathered and beaded ornaments meant to be braided into his hair dangling from one hand. She already wore the beaded feather he had given her as a token of love, one of Vree's own primaries, braided into her own.
"Should I leave the rest of me here?" he suggested. She made an exasperated tsking sound, and pushed him down into a chair. Vree flared his wings to stay balanced. She wove the feathered cords deftly into his long hair, as cleverly as if she had been born in an ekele rather than a palace.
"There," she said, bending to kiss him, then rapping him lightly on the top of his head with her knuckles. "Now you're presentable."
"So I am. And so are you." He rose and headed for the door, this time taking the lead down the stairs. The entire procedure, from the time they entered the room to this moment, had taken a fraction of the time it would take Tremane to get ready. But then again, they were not going to have to be laced into ceremonial armor either.
Their own entourage was so used to this by now that there had been no need for Elspeth to ask anyone to go get Gwena, drape her with her ceremonial barding and bells, and bring her to the Great Hall. The Companion was already waiting for them when they arrived at the side entrance they would use to get in place before either Tremane arrived or the delegation was allowed to enter. The members of Tremane's staff were quite used to seeing a "horse" wandering about the halls now, and let her go her own way when they saw her. Waiting with her were all of the dignitaries that could be hurried into formal clothing or uniforms on short notice, though there was always a chance that not all of them were what they were dressed up to be. Once, after most of Tremane's staff had gone to a meeting with the town council, Darkwind recalled, someone had actually borrowed an Imperial officer's tunic and a handful of medals and coerced the cook into it for one of these ceremonies! Since the folk coming to pledge their loyalty were likely never to set eyes on Shonar again, it did no harm to anyone to have impersonators fill in the ranks of Tremane's Court if it was necessary, to give the impression that every petty lordling with a handful of men was being given the highest of honors.
This time the reverse was true, for not only were all the real Officials present, but the mayor of Shonar, Sandar Giles, had been on his way for a meeting with one of Tremane's underlings when he sa
w the procession of armed men heading for Tremane's manor. He'd sent a now-exhausted runner hastily back to the town for his mayoral finery, and now stood waiting with the rest while the servants did what they could to make the Great Hall bearable.
"One of Tremane's mages is in there, warming the place up," Sandar was saying to Tremane's aide, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable in his nonregulation, heavily embroidered tabard. It looked like—and probably was—something that had been found in an attic and been pressed into service as the "official" clothing of His Majesty's Seneschal. A great deal of the Court garments had been made out of salvaged material or dredged out of attics. For that matter, Sandar Giles' outfit showed a touch of the moth's tooth around the squirrel-fur trim and the woolen hood, as if he had gone to storage for his grandfather's mayoral outfit.
Small wonder Tremane has difficulty taking all this seriously. His "court" is hardly up to the standards of even his Old ducal household, I should imagine. Elspeth and I are the only ones who are not threadbare and much-mended.
But none of the various delegations that had come riding or walking in to Shonar had looked any better, and most had looked much worse. By the current standards of the country, Tremane's Court probably looked remarkably prosperous.
Before this is all over, we may look back on these times fondly, as the days when we were all doing well. It was a grim thought, but one which he and Elspeth often shared. If the mage-storms could not be held back—
Well, there was nothing to be gained by dwelling on that now. Under Tremane's direction, people were readying themselves for worse to come, and Hardornens, unlike Valdemarans, were perfectly willing to believe in "worse to come." Once the ceremony was over, but just before the delegation left for home, Tremane would give this new lot their directions on surviving the final Storm, as he had every other delegation so far. That those directions were mainly guesses hardly mattered; they would have direction and confidence that he had the situation on the way to being under control.
The door opened, and a thin, gawky man came through it, a fellow with thinning hair, who squinted at them from behind a pair of glass lenses set in a lead frame that rested on his nose. "It's warm in there now, and it should last through your ceremony," the mage said, and made shooing motions as if they were a bunch of hens he wanted to drive before him. "In with you now! The sooner you get the ceremony over with, less likely that the spell will wear off before it's over!"
None of them needed a second invitation; the hallway was freezing, and the promise of warmth was all the encouragement they required to move quickly.
Elspeth and Gwena hung back until the others were inside, and Darkwind remained with them. Gwena was quite careful whenever she came inside the manor, and despite the complaints from Tremane's household staff, she left very little sign of her presence after these ceremonies. Some of the Hardornen warriors, who forgot to remove spurs or came striding in wearing heavy, hobnailed boots, did worse damage than Gwena, who picked up each hoof neatly and set it down again with the greatest of care.
Gwena was arrayed in the "riderless" version of Companion full dress; no saddle, but with a blue and silver blanket cut like her barding, decorated at all the points with silver bells, a blue-dyed leather hackamore with silver tassels at the cheekpieces, and reins bedecked with more silver bells. Had there been more time to ready her, the decorations included even bells and blue ribbons to braid into her mane and tail, but she had to be content with her mane and tail flowing freely.
"You look lovely, as always," Darkwind told her.
:Thank you,: she replied coyly, and gave her head a tiny toss so that the bells chimed. :I'm afraid we four are making a more impressive show than Tremane's own Court, but that can't be helped.:
"At least we are making our support unmistakable," he pointed out, as they took their appointed places among the rest.
There was some shuffling as the dignitaries of Tremane's Court sorted themselves out, then the young Seneschal nodded his head and the main doors were flung open to admit the latest delegation.
At the head of the procession was a youngster—no boy, but young, too young to need a razor—of about fourteen. Under his scarlet cloak and tabard, he wore full armor that had seen hard use, and his eyes were far too old to belong to that young face. The dented and slightly tarnished baronial circlet about his brow did not detract from the painful dignity with which he carried himself, and by his build and the muscles beneath the armor, he was clearly no stranger to real fighting. Behind him, more men in full armor followed in pairs, ranging in age from powerful graybeards to men only a little older than the boy-baron. One of the two immediately behind the boy carried a small wooden box. They paraded in slowly, surveying every person there with suspicion, and Darkwind smothered a smile as the boy's eyes lit on the Alliance envoys, widened, and flitted from Elspeth to Darkwind and back, finally remaining on Darkwind.
:I won,: she mindspoke unnecessarily.
The entire delegation came to a halt at the foot of the low dais. By now, several of the Shonar artisans were at work on a real throne for Tremane, since the original throne of Hardorn had been lost in looting and fires, but it would not be finished for another week or two. In place of a real throne was a prop throne, made for an Imperial theatrical production, and modified by those same artisans. They had sanded off the gilt paint, which had probably looked fine at a distance but only looked cheap and shoddy up close, and had removed all of the glass-paste jewels set into the back. What had been carved wolves adorning the back were now hounds, the Hardornen symbol of fidelity. The swords making up the legs and arms, and interlaced on the back below the hounds, had become tree branches, and the wood had been rubbed with oils and polished until it shone. The shabby cushions had been replaced with brown velvet purloined from drapes taken from storage. However, in the course of all the recarving, the wood had been pared down in some places to a precarious extent, and Tremane had been warned to be very careful when sitting on it. Everyone was going to breathe a sigh of relief when the new throne took the place of the old. It could be taken for a terrible omen if Tremane's throne collapsed beneath him in the middle of one of these ceremonies. Tremane had good-naturedly commented that having a fake Imperial throne recarved into a fragile Hardornen throne was entirely appropriate.
Tremane kept the delegation waiting just long enough for them to get a good look at the rest of his Court, and to take in the banners on the wall behind his throne, which represented those who had already come in and brought him their pledges. Most of those who had sworn their oaths had taken their banners from the arms of the former nobles of the region, although more often than not there had been no one who actually qualified to take those arms. Tremane had solved that quickly enough by confirming the delegates in their places as the new lords, and bestowing the old titles upon them as soon as their pledges were confirmed.
Sadly, besides a number of ancient titles going begging, there was plenty of empty land lying fallow and abandoned, but Tremane had plans for that, too. Once summer arrived, it would be settled, and former Imperial officers who were ready to retire would be ennobled and put in place as overlords. They would be allowed to take with them as many Imperial soldiers as wished to retire to farming and had found brides among the Hardornens; these would be given freehold-grants on reclaimed farms. Thus, the newly ennobled would have garrison and work force in one, and the newly wed couples would have more of a base for their start than most. After that particular announcement, the number of engagements and handfastings had skyrocketed, and if some of the good farmers and fathers of Shonar had been a bit reluctant to welcome Imperial sons-in-law at first, their reluctance had evaporated when they learned of the royal bride-price the foreign sons-in-law would bring, thanks to the foresight of their new King.
Darkwind hid a smile as the young Baron kept taking covert glances at him, as if the youngster had never seen anything so outlandish in his life. Darkwind had been told that rumors of his presence and p
owers were circulating out beyond Shonar's walls, rumors which got more and more fantastic with every league distant from the city. He wondered what the boy had heard, to make him look so wide-eyed.
There was a bit of a stir at the door just off the dais, and Tremane's major-domo stepped inside.
The major-domo rapped three times on the floor with the butt of his staff. "His Majesty, King Tremane of Hardorn!" the man announced in ringing tones, his clear, commanding voice showing precisely why he had been plucked out of the ranks to fill this position. "And his Majesty's Chief Advisers!"
Tremane and his four Chief Advisers filed in with ponderous dignity. Of course, his Chief Advisers were also members of his bodyguard, but their weapons were not carried in an obvious fashion, and there was nothing about them to advertise that fact. Tremane wore his ceremonial armor, the Hardornen Crown, a tapestry tabard with his own arms (requisitioned from his former squire), and was draped in a fine cloak of silk edged in heavily embroidered silk trim purloined from the same curtains that had provided him with material for the seat cushions of his throne. The cloak was also part of the props for some unknown play; it was ridiculously long and required the services of two small boys recruited as pages to carry the trailing end.
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